Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday February 13, 2011 @06:13PM
from the quite-a-wikipedia-entry-has-silvio dept.

Giorgio Maone writes "Italian Police just seized the Savona e Ponente Blog because the 60-year-old journalist Valeria Rossi posted a satirical article titled 'I want to kill Berlusconi,' writing that 'you can't feel guilty of wishing him death, because he's not human: he's an alien, with incredible psychic powers.' Otherwise, how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now? Here's a mirror of the incriminating text (Italian)." And here's a translation to English.

Did you know it is illegal to say: "I wish President Obama was killed by mortar fire on the White House. It could be set up across the park and use the flag on said White House to provide a rough wind measurement."

Your comment will lead to some militrary contractor getting the opportunity to sell gigantic fans for $500 million each to the white house. within two weeks you'll notice that the flags around the white house will always point in a offset from the actual wind direction.

Your comment will lead to some militrary contractor getting the opportunity to sell gigantic fans for $500 million each to the white house. within two weeks you'll notice that the flags around the white house will always point in a offset from the actual wind direction.

Hmmm. Perhaps a mechanical flag would be better, with thin metal supports in the cloth controlled by a mechanism running down to pole. That way, a central controller could track the wind and wave a little 'off'.
Or perhaps some 3D hologram system (giant octagonal bodies and highway ramps for arms!)...

Actually, there are hundreds of flags that are flown up there and on the roof of the US Congress. You wouldn't believe the amount of business that is done selling flags that have been flown up there. Even I got one as a present.

"Did you know it is illegal to say: "I wish President Obama was killed by mortar fire on the White House. It could be set up across the park and use the flag on said White House to provide a rough wind measurement.""

BZZT! Wrong! I've had several talks with the SS, in person, regarding a phone call I had with someone stating similar things.

It is not illegal until you say "I plan to" or "I am going to."

Saying "I wish" is an opinion and is protected speech.

The whole thing revolves around INTENT. Wishing is not the same as saying you'll do it.

This has been a PSA from someone that has dealt with the Secret Service on multiple occasions - in fact some of my own./ postings have made the SS come to my house.

While a normal citizen doesn't have a security force dedicated to their safety, the laws regarding threatening to kill them are the same. In particular it is illegal to threaten to kill someone or to tell someone else to kill them.

So if I threaten to kill you, that is illegal. I can go to jail just for that. I don't have to take any actual action, just to make a threat against your life.

However it has to be an actual threat, or a command to someone else, not just a joke or a statement of opinion. If you bea

The more than 12 defendants in the case were ordered to pay $100 million in damages to abortion clinics and doctors. They had argued that they have a free speech right to publish details about the doctors, but after a three-week trial, an eight-person jury found that such sites were a "true threat" to physicians who perform abortions, according to the Planned Parenthood Columbia/Willamette (PPCW) in Portland.

Note that the Christian web site in question never said that they planned to or were going to carry out acts of violence - it merely collated information about what they termed "baby butchers" and called for them to be "brought to justice".

It has everything to do with context. For example you could state "I wish ex-President Bush was killed, executed by firing squad, after being found guilty in a court of law for murder by starting an illegal war in which innocent people died". In a country that allowed capital punishment that would be quite legal, of course those legal clarifications are required to create the correct context.

In the case of the blog, satire as an excuse does not protect you from everything you might decide to write. In th

Kinda what I was thinking. Especially a text which doesn't have any smiley or anything, and, as far as my piss-poor Italian allows, can read just as well as a schizophrenic's hate tirade. I mean, much as I would like to believe that a text going on about how someone isn't human and can hypnotize the masses is obviously a parody, you could say the same about the contrail conspiracy theory and yet some dolts out there believe it in all earnest.

The thing is, some people _do_ go nuts now and then and start believing all sorts of highly illogical stuff right before they go and shoot someone. A text whose basic and repeated gist seems to be "I never was for killing another human, but I want to kill the head of the government, and it's ok to kill him because he's a mind-controling alien" would probably get one investigated in the USA or most other countries.

I kind of have sympathy for him, and see how being run by a douchebag using his media monopoly to keep himself in power would drive someone to despair. But FFS there are better ways to go about it without sounding like a delusional rant about wanting to kill him. Or at least, you know, a couple of winking smileys or something.

as far as my piss-poor Italian allows, can read just as well as a schizophrenic's hate tirade.

I understand your argument, but as a mother-language Italian speaker I can confirm that the text is clearly meant tongue-in-cheek. Not an especially hilarious piece, maybe in bad taste, but it would be obvious even to a moron in a hurry (provided he can read Italian) that it is not serious.

I am pretty sure that, had such a piece been written about some opponent of Berlusconi (e.g. Di Pietro, Vendola or Fini), no su

Not everybody has the same sense of humor... especially politicians and those who's job it is to protect them.

Yes it's weird. This journalist is a woman. Women are completely immune to prosecution for sexual harassment, rape, domestic abuse, and indecent exposure even when it is absolutely certain they have done those things, and fellas, women physically hit/abuse their spouses more than men do -- think about that. I thought they would throw "threatening language" in there as a bonus immunity but I guess I was wrong. Maybe Italy isn't all about the double standards like USA.

I keep reading about this clown, the demonstrations against him etc, but it all seems to boil down to one thing - the lack of a credible alternative. As long as there isn't one, he's going to be in power. This simple fact seems to have escaped the Italian voting public for years now. Is it really hard to find someone in Italy who's not a crook and who wants to be president?

It all boils down to "laws and morality are for little people." If there's a lack of a credible alternative, it's probably because the credible alternatives, being a little guys, get discredited through illegal (but not to the PTB) acts the inute they come on the radar.

Burlusconi has been Prime Minister of Italy for a long time now, in part by owning most of the media -- he started with a radio station and a newspaper in the south, and pretty much came to control everything. When he wanted the job of PM, guess who every newspaper endorsed for the job? He's basically the William Randolph Hearst of Italy, except Hearst never managed to hold an office.

Burlusconi is in it only for the power and will stomp on anyone to get his way. In a way, though, this is extremely instructive: This is what happens when you allow one person or a handful of people unrestricted control of the media.

Isn't Italy a parliamentary government? That means it's like the whole government doesn't have a representative who is a better choice for PM than a corupt, seventy year old pedophile. Some Italians actually look up to him because he's still a lecherous bastard at his age.

On the other hand, Roman emperors also had the habit of occasionally getting things done in grand style. That is what I find most baffling about Berlusconi's endurance: Not only is the guy a grossly corrupt sleazeball plutocrat, he hasn't achieved particularly thrilling results in economic, law-and-order, or quality of life metrics.

My personal theory always has been that because of Italy's macho culture most Italian men would love to be in his shoes. So they might admit that he's an awful politician but secretely they wish they had a pair of balls like his.;)

Sollozzo: Bene, Don Corleone. I need a man who has powerful friends. I need a million dollars in cash. I need, Don Corleone, all of those politicians that you carry around in your pocket, like so many nickels and dimes
.

He is not beloved by the police. Just have a look at the ANSA [wikipedia.org] messages on the sap website [sap-nazionale.org] (Sindacato Autonomo di Polizia, a union for the members of the Polizia di Stato). These are the official statements - it would be interesting to read the "off the record"-messages.

The current government has cut funds so that the police doesn't have enough money to fuel their cars. Stories about officers buying gas for the patrol cars with their own, personal money are no exaggeration. I know a couple of officers who ha

Lesson #1: Never, ever, get into anything related to bashing politicians. It's a free way to disaster.I'd go as far as to say "Never voice your political opinions", except maybe with your family and close friends.

When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.

As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.

Lesson #1: Never, ever, get into anything related to bashing politicians. It's a free way to disaster.
I'd go as far as to say "Never voice your political opinions", except maybe with your family and close friends.

FF some 10-15 years and not even there: your 5-6 yo grandchildren may "snitch" you by simply speaking to persons outside your trust circle. Don't you dare to break your trust circle either - like divorcing or something - not if you don't plan to snitch your "soon to be your ex-spouse and political detainee" before divorce. Can tell the above for sure, as a person who lived in Eastern Europe for the first 20-something years of life. Would you like such a life? 'Cause if not, better forget about your advices

Politicians are our servant, officially speaking. Bashing a servant should be without consequences.Stripping people of such right makes revolt a just moral choice. Of course revolt might be the expected response, rage becoming fuel for other immoral machinations.I dunno your country but here:Fascism 1.0 (1914-1945) is when that freedom is taken away.Fascism 2.0 (1945-2001) is when politicians are uniformly puppets, so bashing them is encouraged as a diversion.Fascism 3.0 (2001-present) is when bashing is a

Political opinions are what runs a democracy - it is the people in the street, talking about what goes on in the state and what should be done about it. Silencing that free and open debate, as is apparently the custom in the United States, is the death of democracy and the advent of belittling leaders who 'know what is best for the people'.

To an outside observer, it seems that Berlusconi has stayed in politics for one primary reason - to make sure that he can keep changing laws every time there's an attempt to prosecute him for some misdeed. With that tactic, he's rendered the judiciary largely irrelevant. He owns a vast media empire, and hasn't been forced to keep his media holdings at arm's length while in office, so he's used that to prop up his political empire. The Italian Parliament doesn't seem to be able to deal with the issue. The disconnect between those in power and a good chunk of the population is very high, according to some recent news reports.

Given his personal behavior, you have to wonder just how corrupt his government actually is, and who may have been in a position to blackmail him for favors over the last twenty years. If he'd managed to avoid sexual misconduct that seemed deplorable to his core supporters, he wouldn't be in trouble now.

If Italy was in another part of the world, there would probably be a lot of questions about how democratic it actually is.

Lying about an affair? I don't care. Paying an underage girl for sex? That's different. That's the allegation in Italy. There are even media reports that the Mafia has compromising pictures of Berlusconi. Also, Clinton didn't run around trying to act like a paragon of virtue with a lot of support from religious conservatives.

Given his personal behavior, you have to wonder just how corrupt his government actually is, and who may have been in a position to blackmail him for favors over the last twenty years. If he'd managed to avoid sexual misconduct that seemed deplorable to his core supporters, he wouldn't be in trouble now.

Exactly. And it's quite understandable that Berlusconi couldn't keep his hands off the extremely gorgeous 'Ruby' (Karima El Mahroug), so one can actually start wondering if he was set up here in an effort to finally get him - a bit like how Bill Clinton was set up; both leaders were known for their runaway interest in the opposite sex so it wasn't too hard to get them to fall in with both feet...

Oh, the memories. I always believed that Bill should have been impeached, not for the silly 'crimes' he was accused of, but for a serious violation of aesthetics. Gees, he was the President, couldn't he do better than that? It reflected poorly on the whole country.

how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now?

The asterisked part translates to "I am ready to go kill him myself".Now granted, the rest of the blog post is obviously satyrical and even thinking this person actually wants to go kill the dude (whom I intensely dislike, by the way) is insane, but the fact is, she did violate the law by stating this. It's st

I don't know much about the conditions in Italy, I hardly speak any Italian, but in some other countries people get elected, not because they are the best for the job, or even slightly good, but just because they are somewhat better than the alternatives.

"Otherwise, how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now?"

I see this a lot in politics these days: educated, intelligent journalists lashing out and saying anyone who doesn't agree with their political opinions must not be a member of the human race. And here's one who thinks that it's OK to call for deaths just because she's frustrated.

There's a critical difference between a satirical call for death and an actual death threat [wikipedia.org]. Death itself is a powerful subject, and it can be used quite aptly to evoke far more sentiment than straight murderous rampage. In this case, she wasn't stating her intent to kill Berlusconi, nor was she attempting to rally others to do the same. Rather, she was expressing her rage and frustration at him, which is well within (at least American) bounds of free speech.

This seizure wasn't made out of fear and concern for Berlusconi's wellbeing. This is textbook abuse of law for the purpose of silencing opposition.

America has the same thing, Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died.

This is a really stupid example. Maybe read a little into things [wikipedia.org] before echoing the political impulse. As outrageous and annoying as Palin is, there is no good reason to suspect she had anything to do with the shootings.

And exactly how does it help satire anyway? It seems to me like one could make a satire on the theme of Berlusconi being a mind-controlling alien without repeated and obsessive returns to how that makes it ok to kill him. Remove the incitations to killing him from it, and you still have the same satire. Well, and still not particularly funny, but adding some violent rhetoric doesn't make it any funnier, it just makes it distasteful.

And frankly, I don't know if Palin in particular and one particular killing are linked, but the tone of political mud-slinging in the USA is not something most of us outside the USA admire. Drawing crosshairs on maps and opponents homes and all the hate rhetoric is something that adds... what? Why don't those guys and gal just say what their party will do for the voter, instead of how their opponents are traitors and need to be shot?

And frankly, even Loughner, since you mention him, seems like a poster child for a right wingnut. Complete with stuff like not having to take "federalist" laws, ranting about the return to a gold standard, and such touching woowoo CT views as that the government mind-controls the people via neuro-linguistic programming. Yes, he was crazy and as deranged as to hold a mortal grudge over not getting the answer he wanted to a nonsense irrelevant question. But are you sure that it's ok to keep telling such nutcases that a segment of the population are traitors and need to be shot? Because it's not clear to me at all.

By sheer virtue of having a large population, there are 2.2 million schizophrenics in the USA. (Note that I'm not picking on the USA for that. All countries have them and a 0.81% prevalence rate isn't particularly high.) Add retards, Lyme disease victims, etc, and you just have a few millions who aren't particularly good at judging stuff. Exactly what is gained by hammering into their heads that some people are traitors and need to be shot and drawing crosshairs on maps? It seems to me like it's only a matter of time until someone whose line between reality and fantasy is blurred anyway, acts upon that information.

Except for the fact that if any one of us non-politicians had an identical looking website as Palin's with gun crosshairs and a listing of people (one of which was just murdered), we would be in prison right now waiting for our trial in 2025 or later.

The Dems did a similar thing in 2004. And even then, I think that's a pretty silly example. While we're at it, let's investigate anyone who uses the phrase "targeted marketing."

The guy who shot Giffords was obsessed with killing her and had been for some time.

I see this a lot in politics these days: educated, intelligent journalists lashing out and saying anyone who doesn't agree with their political opinions must not be a member of the human race.

You truly are missing the point. This is not about a disagreeing with political opinion. It is lashing out because Mr. Berlusconi is a criminal of the worst degree. He's using his post as a prime minister shield against various corruption charges, he's hiring child prostitutes, he's appointing showgirls as parliamentary candidates, etc. The guy is an embarrassment to whole Europe. Only the people of Italy does not seem to get it.

They're not "child" prostitutes, they're like seventeen. Now, I agree that it's abhorrent to go with somebody that young if you're over 24 and he's like 70. I also think that if guilty he'd have to go straight to jail as underage prostitution is terrible.But I point out that had he waited some months the girls would turn 18, he'd have been above such charges. I have theories:1. those girls are the way to frame him, his entourage has a lot of shady guys. The mafia or the really powerful people don't let a gu

> saying anyone who doesn't agree with their political opinions must not be a member of the human race

Lemme translate some famous pearls of S. Berlusconi"Judges are mentally ill and antropologically different from the rest of human race"About his opposition: "I can't believe there are so many dumbasses ('coglioni') that vote against their interests"

"Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died."

When?

It certainly wasn't the Giffords shooting. Jared Lee Loughner is a guy whose two favorite books were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. He liked using drugs, was a religion hating atheist, was a registered Independent who usually didn't even vote, and according to his friends, would well up at anger at the very sight of George W. Bush.

Sarah Palin's calls for violence incited her followers and real people died.

Citation REALLY FUCKING NEEDED. (oh and if you are talking about the shooting in Arizona, then Sarah Palin's "follower" was someone who ignored all politics... you may just as blamed Obama since Obama talked about bringing guns to knife fights in Philadelphia when he was campaigning) Just because a politician like Palin is unpopular on Slashdot does not make her a terrorist. What's even worse is that people on this website will tw

lolwut? Are you a moron?
Right now, we can point at a couple of wars that could be blamed on the right.
Before then there were a couple of wars that could be blamed on the left. (arguably smaller than the more recent "right wing wars" - not to mention the reasons behind the wars turned out to be truthful.)
And before all that there has been war / murder / death at the behest of all kinds of *extremists*. Lefties can be extremists and righties can be extremists.
Political violence is endemic *in the human